Last Saturday I took part in this year`s Linux Information Day here in Dresden. I wasn't able to attend these events through the last three years, so I was pretty interested in what these people did there and how it was accepted by the visitors. Therefore I enrolled as a helper and was chosen to be the "track manager" for one of the three track rooms. In fact this position meant that I was inside all the talks, helped the speakers to prepare for their talk, announced their talks and gave information to the visitors.
To me this was a nice job and I really liked the possiblity to get close to the speakers. I really met some interesting guys there, doing admirable things and giving really good talks about it. On the other side of course there also were bad and boring sessions where the speaker seemed to be on drugs or to fall asleep the next moment - hey, but that's the way university goes all the day so there was nothing new or shocking about it.
One word about the geeks: Many of you may have heard or read about these guys. Pale, thick glasses, blains. Of course I am aware that such guys exist, but to me it always seemed, that this should not be the usual description for a computer guy, because I know a lot of people who are not of that kind. During the Linux Day my attitude was put onto a big test: there were countless guys fitting the description. Guys having problems to talk to other people, guys not seeming to know that there are different things in life than computers and Linux and that stuff. Sad thing. :(
Last.FM: Recently listened
Monday, October 31, 2005
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Bash them hard!
A friend introduced me to german-bash lately. The site stores interesting, depressing, stupid and otherwise funny quotes from German IRC and chat sessions. This news gives me another blog entry for today... *g*
My current favorite (translated to English...):
My current favorite (translated to English...):
Hey, don't be that pessimistic. Optimists really live longer. - *nodd* Yeah. That serves them right...
Business Strategies
Spiegel online today has an article about how modern life and business strategies are related to ancient or medieval philosophies. The article links to a test that gives you 21 questions to find out who you are and what you believe.
As a fan of such online tests (remember the coffee test some weeks ago?) I rushed in to take the test. My result: I am mostly the Machiavelli-kind of guy. True and sometimes unpopular focussed on my goals. Some of my answers also match Clausewitz (showing, that I am aware of the risks and take options into account) and Hagakure (meaning I seem to have some sense of taking risks).
Mmmmmh. I don't know whether others view me like that?
(The article as well as the test are in German.)
As a fan of such online tests (remember the coffee test some weeks ago?) I rushed in to take the test. My result: I am mostly the Machiavelli-kind of guy. True and sometimes unpopular focussed on my goals. Some of my answers also match Clausewitz (showing, that I am aware of the risks and take options into account) and Hagakure (meaning I seem to have some sense of taking risks).
Mmmmmh. I don't know whether others view me like that?
(The article as well as the test are in German.)
Monday, October 24, 2005
[Sports] Dresden Marathon
Yesterday a friend and I took part in one of Germany's largest city marathon runs - the Dresden Marathon. As our training was not dedicated and long enough to even finish the whole 42,195 km, we decided to take part in the half-marathon competition and did not plan to meet a certain finish deadline - we just wanted to go there and see what we can do without a lot of effort - We often cancel training runs, because we have something else to do... :( For being nearly completely untrained on the 21 km distance, we were very happy to finish in net times of 02:02:38 and 02:04:46. Of course we promise to do better next year, as we plan to do some more training and more competitions next year.
We chose Dresden as our first run, because this is the place where we live and so it was easy for us to take part. (Remember, we are students and cannot spend all our money for journeying around just to give us some pain anywhere... *g*) The route was very impressive and went along nearly every place you will need to visit as a tourist. As it was a city marathon, most of the run was on paved roads and we did not have any hills or mountains in here.
The marathon organization was also great. The day before we even got a noodle meal for free (carbohydrates.. yeah!). Also on Saturday we visited the Marathon Expo and got informed about clothing, food and competitions we can visit next year. During the run on sunday there were quite enough catering posts (water every 2 km, bananas, bread and isotonic drinks every 5 km) - you won't believe the great taste of dry bread and a banana at kilometre 16... :)
The greates experience was of cause the moment, when we reached the finish line and everything was over. Now after having slept nearly enough to compensate the run, it is time to think how to go on next. My plan is now to reach a half-marathon time of below 2 hours (which should be easy) and in the best case a time below 01:50 h (which will be some harder). If I can do this without a problem, I will look forward for the real experience. Maybe I can do a whole marathon in Dresden next year.
We chose Dresden as our first run, because this is the place where we live and so it was easy for us to take part. (Remember, we are students and cannot spend all our money for journeying around just to give us some pain anywhere... *g*) The route was very impressive and went along nearly every place you will need to visit as a tourist. As it was a city marathon, most of the run was on paved roads and we did not have any hills or mountains in here.
The marathon organization was also great. The day before we even got a noodle meal for free (carbohydrates.. yeah!). Also on Saturday we visited the Marathon Expo and got informed about clothing, food and competitions we can visit next year. During the run on sunday there were quite enough catering posts (water every 2 km, bananas, bread and isotonic drinks every 5 km) - you won't believe the great taste of dry bread and a banana at kilometre 16... :)
The greates experience was of cause the moment, when we reached the finish line and everything was over. Now after having slept nearly enough to compensate the run, it is time to think how to go on next. My plan is now to reach a half-marathon time of below 2 hours (which should be easy) and in the best case a time below 01:50 h (which will be some harder). If I can do this without a problem, I will look forward for the real experience. Maybe I can do a whole marathon in Dresden next year.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
[Soccer] Dynamo Dresden vs. Alemannia Aachen
It's getting cold here. Autumn leafs are getting brown on the trees, the sky is all cloudy and if it is clear, this leads to even colder winds blowing through the streets. So how to become warm on a monday evening? Some friends and me tried the Dynamo way: Alemannia Aachen were in town and playing against Dynamo Dresden yesterday evening. That's why we went to the stadium to have some jumping and singing experience once again.
The game started unexpected: the Dresden team was pushed into a defensive position and did not often get out of it allover the game. Aachen attacked one wave after the other, supported by many bad mistakes made by Dynamo players. One could argue that these mistakes happened, because three or four of the players were only in because they played a position of other injured players - but even then you should not play that bad if you plan to stay in the Second League this year again.
First 30 minutes saw many attacks, some of them seriously bringing us near a heart attack, but up to then they did not bring the effort they should. In minute 34 however, Aachen scored a goal after kicking the ball on to the goal 3 times in a row without hitting it. No one of us was really surprised, we just stood there without talking - maybe even more shocked by the way the game went than by the goal itself. Some relief 2 minutes later: Witold Wawrzyczek (that's the guy with the name no one could spell by the beginning of this season - but our fans' Polish has improved at least a little bit over the time.) hammered the ball from 25 metres into Aachen's goal. 1-1 at halftime - we went to drink some mulled wine (did i mention that it is getting cold here?) and tried to forget the soccer disease we saw in the last 45 minutes.
Half two started as the first one ended: Aachen rushing and attacking, Dynamo in a defensive position which they were obviously not prepared to take. Another good attack lead to the 1-2 goal in minute 51. Some minutes later the Dresden players started to wake up. The fan curve hat been yelling "We want to see you fight" for minutes, now it seemed our players had understood. Unfortunately they were too nervous now to get something really done even though they tried to fight. The end of the game saw two of our players leaving the field because of foul plays, Dynamo's co-trainer was sent to the tribune because of shouting at the referee multiple times. No wonder, Aachen scored a goal for the 1-3 final result later that game.
Many of the referee's decisions during the last twenty minutes of the game were not quite easy to understand for the fans, many of them got very angry. However, these decisions did not change the game - we already had lost in the first 70 minutes. The defeat was okay, it even would have been okay if Aachen had made five or six goals. The referee only made the game taste even more bitter. (Greetings to the Bitterman in Brazil!). If Dynamo keeps on playing like this, we are going to face terribly dark times. 4 games at home are left until christmas, three of them are derbies against the teams from Aue, Rostock and Cottbus. Currently we are number two in East Germany - if we want to keep this place, we should win at least two of these games.
Besides, yesterday's game had a main sponsor: T-Mobile, a German mobile company. When we entered the stadium, we saw all the seats covered with magenta balloons, before the game started, some management guy of T-Mobile stood on the field and tried to convince us that magenta is a great color in combination with our traditional black and yellow. (We were not convinced afterwards.) But T-Mobile had spent a lot of money for this: they had hired the East-German band "Die Puhdys" to perform three songs before the game and they had a lottery running, were they gave away 1.000 prepaid handies. (I didn't win one.) The Ultra fan block presented a transparent shouting at T-Mobile and its commercial ideas, but this transparent was soon removed by the stadium security. That's what pissed off many of the fans if they were not already in rage because of this commercial attitude. My pragmatic opinion, although I know that many others disagree about it: Dynamo needs all the money they can get and if this means to have some terrible balloons at a game or to sell the stadium name - just do it.
The game started unexpected: the Dresden team was pushed into a defensive position and did not often get out of it allover the game. Aachen attacked one wave after the other, supported by many bad mistakes made by Dynamo players. One could argue that these mistakes happened, because three or four of the players were only in because they played a position of other injured players - but even then you should not play that bad if you plan to stay in the Second League this year again.
First 30 minutes saw many attacks, some of them seriously bringing us near a heart attack, but up to then they did not bring the effort they should. In minute 34 however, Aachen scored a goal after kicking the ball on to the goal 3 times in a row without hitting it. No one of us was really surprised, we just stood there without talking - maybe even more shocked by the way the game went than by the goal itself. Some relief 2 minutes later: Witold Wawrzyczek (that's the guy with the name no one could spell by the beginning of this season - but our fans' Polish has improved at least a little bit over the time.) hammered the ball from 25 metres into Aachen's goal. 1-1 at halftime - we went to drink some mulled wine (did i mention that it is getting cold here?) and tried to forget the soccer disease we saw in the last 45 minutes.
Half two started as the first one ended: Aachen rushing and attacking, Dynamo in a defensive position which they were obviously not prepared to take. Another good attack lead to the 1-2 goal in minute 51. Some minutes later the Dresden players started to wake up. The fan curve hat been yelling "We want to see you fight" for minutes, now it seemed our players had understood. Unfortunately they were too nervous now to get something really done even though they tried to fight. The end of the game saw two of our players leaving the field because of foul plays, Dynamo's co-trainer was sent to the tribune because of shouting at the referee multiple times. No wonder, Aachen scored a goal for the 1-3 final result later that game.
Many of the referee's decisions during the last twenty minutes of the game were not quite easy to understand for the fans, many of them got very angry. However, these decisions did not change the game - we already had lost in the first 70 minutes. The defeat was okay, it even would have been okay if Aachen had made five or six goals. The referee only made the game taste even more bitter. (Greetings to the Bitterman in Brazil!). If Dynamo keeps on playing like this, we are going to face terribly dark times. 4 games at home are left until christmas, three of them are derbies against the teams from Aue, Rostock and Cottbus. Currently we are number two in East Germany - if we want to keep this place, we should win at least two of these games.
Besides, yesterday's game had a main sponsor: T-Mobile, a German mobile company. When we entered the stadium, we saw all the seats covered with magenta balloons, before the game started, some management guy of T-Mobile stood on the field and tried to convince us that magenta is a great color in combination with our traditional black and yellow. (We were not convinced afterwards.) But T-Mobile had spent a lot of money for this: they had hired the East-German band "Die Puhdys" to perform three songs before the game and they had a lottery running, were they gave away 1.000 prepaid handies. (I didn't win one.) The Ultra fan block presented a transparent shouting at T-Mobile and its commercial ideas, but this transparent was soon removed by the stadium security. That's what pissed off many of the fans if they were not already in rage because of this commercial attitude. My pragmatic opinion, although I know that many others disagree about it: Dynamo needs all the money they can get and if this means to have some terrible balloons at a game or to sell the stadium name - just do it.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Coffee?
| You Are a Soy Latte |
 At your best, you are: free spirited, down to earth, and relaxed At your worst, you are: dogmatic and picky You drink coffee when: you need a pick me up, and green tea isn't cutting it Your caffeine addiction level: medium |
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